Harold Knight Sewing 1924. The (same) blue in these five paintings has been fascinating and heart-warming hasn't it? A tiny bit of cheer in a very difficult week, with Ukraine in the forefront of all our minds. This weekend we shall re-watch Dr Zhivago, one of the greatest but saddest films ever made, and re-read our own Into the Whirlwind. We are, by the way, just about to send out an email listing forthcoming Persephone events: the film of Into the Whirlwind will be shown in our upstairs room on Tuesday July 5th. Who knows what will have happened to Ukraine by then?

Of course Laura's dress may really have been 'that' blue, but one can't help feeling that it's homage to Harold Harvey's artist ancestors in the way the eye is drawn to it. Laura and Paul Jewell Hill is at the Penlee Art Gallery and was painted in 1915.

The Virgin with the Pomegranate (could this be an allusion to Persephone?) is at the Prado, Fra Angelico painted it in about 1426.

Piero della Francesca's The Nativity c. 1470 uses the beautiful blue. Of course people have written books about blue paint (which was expensive) but on the Post this week we are simply enjoying it without any analysis.

To celebrate Gainsborough's The Blue Boy being (temporarily) lent to the National Gallery, this week on the Post we shall feature this particular blue in five paintings. First up the painting itself, more details here.

And the fifth early spring flower, the one we have just planted in our window boxes – primula, in all their gloriousness. (This photograph shows the shop window before we opened up ie. drew the curtain: we made the decision not to have a conventional window display at night but to cover ourselves from view with mattress ticking, and it was, we think, the right decision. This is annoying for some people, who can't find out about the books in the evening by looking in the shop window, but safer, we hope.)

It's nice to know, courtesy of the Crocus website (where pots are reduced by 30% because they are now in full flower and will not last much longer), about the origins of scylla: 'Dainty spikes of up to five nodding, bell-shaped, violet-blue flowers in March and April and slender, strap-shaped, glossy, mid-green leaves... They originate from the area around the Black Sea so they are extremely robust.'